In the Belly of the Green BirdThe Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq

Author: Nir Rosen

Free Press, 2006

Nir Rosen is a
fellow of the New America Foundation and has written for
The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Atlantic
Monthly, Harper's Magazine and other publications. He grew
up in Israel and speaks Arabic. He entered
Iraq in April 2003, mingled among Iraqis and befriended
them.

Rosen was in
Fallujah in 2004. Chapter Five of his book is titled "The
Heart of the Insurgency: Fallujah, Summer 2004."
In 2007 the U.S. commander in Iraq, General David
Petraeus, would celebrate Fallujans running Fallujah, but
in 2003 the U.S. military was following
a strategy of defensive military control where it
could (not against looting because looting was not a threat
militarily). The population of Fallujah was
predominately Sunni and had been supporters of Saddam Hussein.
The Americans met with the mayor and, according to Rosen,
drove around town in Humvees broadcasting a recorded message:

Allied
forces are here to bring peace to Iraq and Fallujah and
to rebuild Iraq. Do not throw stones. Do not try to hurt
them. Thank you for your cooperation.

The Americans
bulldozed a lot, created a soccer field and gave the
mayor soccer balls to hand out to children. Elsewhere they
handed out food, fuel, schoolbooks, medicine, candy and
toys.

Fallujans
were opposed to the presence of a foreign army
from the start. The Americans were beating on their doors
in search of weapons. Local leaders and citizenry met and
complained, and they appealed for calm. Sheikh Abdel Hakim
Sabti of the Suheib bin Sinan mosque gave the Americans
six months to prove themselves, and if nothing changes,
he said, there would be jihad. There were those who did
not want to wait. A sign in a mosque called for honorable
men in Fallujah to take part in a Jihad against the
men who bring evil into Iraq. There were incidents and
retaliation by the U.S. force, which further increased
the bitterness toward the Americans. Rosen believes
that it was the presence of U.S. forces that was the "chief
cause of insecurity and violence" in
Iraq. It would be a common point of view among Americans
that the Iraqis had no right to resist a foreign military
invading their community. Others would believe that it
would have been best if the U.S. military had left
the city for the Fallujans to control.

"Things got
worse and worse, month by month," writes Rosen, "until
finally, on April 30, 2004, four American contractors were
killed and mutilated." The impulse of the U.S. command was
to get tough. Strategists saw the incident as an humiliation
that could not be tolerated. That they should not have
been there to begin with was not for them a question worth
consideration. The result was Operation Vigilant Reserve,
designed to pacify Fallujah, and, in November, Operation
Fury, which Rosen describes as having "leveled" the
city. In various countries t-shirts would be worn that
read,
"We are all Fallujans." Rosen writes that "The
American war in Iraq, meant to democratize the region,
had instead radicalized it."

In Chapter
Seven of his book, Nir Rosen covers the Iraqi elections
of January 2005. He quotes President Bush as saying:

Across Iraq
today men and women have taken rightful control of their
country's destiny, and they have chosen a future of
peace and freedom.

Rosen describes something else.
He writes of all the main parties in Iraq – hundreds of
them – being "based on local, tribal, ethnic, or religious
identity or specific issues," with some parties "based
around a family or tribe, some around a city or town" and
many led by clerics. He adds:

Iraq's election
law itself seemed designed to promote civil war. Although
the diverse country is divided into eighteen provinces,
it had only one electoral district. California,
which is roughly the same size as Iraq, has fifty-three.
How could a Shia
from the southern marshes expect his
interests to be represented by a politician from Baghdad
... or Mosul? Ethnic and religious blocks
preferred one district because they were nationally known,
and they would be able to avoid challengers who had genuine
grassroots support on the local level.

Rosen suggests that a democratic
outcome was hampered also by clerics who opposed
the occupation being arrested or under threat of arrest.
The election results:

Shia
and Kurdish turnout approached 80 percent, while
most Sunnis boycotted. In Samara, a Sunni city of
300,000 north of Baghdad, only 1,400 people voted, and
they probably belonged to the city's tiny Shia
minority.

Nir
Rosen was not imbedded or hanging out with others from
the United States, and he viewed the war other than from
the point of view of those in the U.S. military doing their
duty or doing what they believed was right. Rosen saw a
lot that was negative, and in his years in Iraq the war
was going badly for the U.S. and Iraqis. In an afterword
titled "Republic
of Fear," Rosen
writes of an incident that followed a roadside bombing
that killed several U.S. soldiers. Someone fingered a particular
house where a businessman named Sabah lived with his two brothers,
their wives and six children. The family was affluent and
Rosen was told that "when you a have
a wealthy family people hate them, so we think somebody
in the neighborhood said we were in the resistance." In
the house the soldiers pushed people around, beat them
and broke Sabah's nose. The translator for the soldiers
abused members of the family verbally, described graphically
by Rosen. The family was ordered out
of the house, except for Sabah and a brother. Three shots
rang out. Iraqi National Guardsmen who were outside the
house attempted to rush in, but they were blocked, the
translator scolding them with the question "Who
told you to come in?" The translator emerged with a
picture of Sabah and tore it up in the
face of Sabah's wife, telling her that her husband was
dead.